Park Cities Legends & Legacies—The Crow Family

21 min readSep 8, 2022

“There must always be a burning in your heart to achieve” — Trammel Crow

Legends & Legacies is a series of articles focusing on some of the most prominent and accomplished families of Highland and University Park.

In this, the fourth installment of the Legends & Legacies series, we’ll be taking a retrospective look at the Crow Family.

1st installment: Jerry Jones
2nd installment: Edwin L. Cox
3rd installment: Andrew Beal
4th installment: Crow Family
5th installment: coming soon

Introduction

If money, power and respect is all you need in life, then the Crow family appears to have all bases covered. But behind the name, lies a story of humble beginnings, of risk taking, and of redemption.

What Trammel Crow started back in the 40's, his third son, Harlan Crow, rescued during the 80’s real estate crash, made bigger, stronger and better.

And while this is a history of the Crow family, it’s a story that most of us can relate to, learn from and be inspired by.

The Matriarch — Margaret Doggett Crow
The Patriarch — Trammell Crow
The Third Son — Harlan Crow
Crow Family Holdings
Signature Crow Properties
The Harlan Crow Estate
Philanthropic Pursuits

If you find this topic interesting, click here to view additional articles from my archive.

The Matriarch

Born in 1919, Margaret Doggett Crow was an only child, whose parents died in an automobile accident when she was just 19.

But life can be unpredictable, and three short years following this tragedy, this Hockaday graduate married a young naval officer, Fred Trammell Crow, and for the next 66 years they remained together, building an empire, raising a family and travelling the world.

Paralleling her husband’s rise as a real estate tycoon, Margaret became a socialite, a civic leader and a mother of six children. She also served on many local boards, including for The Hockaday School, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the University of Texas College of Fine Arts Advisory Council.

SS Athenia

Upon her death in 2014, aged 94, Margaret was the last surviving Dallas resident who was aboard the SS Athenia when it became the first British ship sunk by a Nazi U-boat in World War II.

Here’s what happened:

Originally commissioned in 1922, the Athenia was part of the Donaldson line and made a regular passage between the United Kingdom and Canada

Upon graduation from The Hockaday School, Margaret was on a school-sponsored trip in 1939 when a torpedo struck the Athenia at about 7:30 in the evening , making it the first ship torpedoed in the West during WWII
The ship sank, but luckily, the future Mrs. Crow escaped by climbing down a rope ladder into a lifeboat

Thanks in large part to the lessons learned during the Titanic disaster, SS Athenia was loaded with lifesaving equipment
Sailing with 1,418 passengers and crew, the ship was equipped with 1,600 lifejackets and 26 lifeboats capable of carrying over 1,800 passengers. For an added measure of safety, there were 21 Gradwell floats and 18 life buoys.

The Patriarch

Trammell Crow was an original to the end, never losing his zest for life. As late as into his 80’s, he could still be spotted riding around on his Kawasaki motorcycle.

Born: 1914, Dallas Texas
Deceased: 2009
Business legacy: a pioneer in the field of commercial real estate development, Trammell Crow came from humble beginnings to build a real estate empire spanning the globe
Family: at the time of his death, Mr. Crow was survived by his wife, Margaret, six children: Robert, Howard, Harlan, Trammell S., Lucy Billingsley and Stuart, and 16 grandchildren

A Risk Taker From the Start

“it all began with 4,500 sq ft … ”

It wasn’t merely Mr. Crow’s work ethic that led to his spectacular success in real estate. His vision and willingness to take risks played a major role as well.

In fact, his first deal, executed in 1949 in Dallas, went on to change the face of commercial real estate development.

Here’s what happened:

Crow bought a parcel of land on Cole Street to put up an 11,250 square foot warehouse building
He meant to rent the building to the Ray-O-Vac Battery Co., but the company only needed 6,750 square feet, which left 4,500 that needed to be leased
Mr. Crow looked for a second tenant for the empty space and found Decca Records. Before the building was finished, Decca had signed up for the remaining 4,500 square feet, and Trammell Crow had become, in his own words, a “confirmed gambler, and a speculative builder.”

With his ‘speculative’ approach, Crow was leaving behind an old world in which a developer found a tenant, built a warehouse to meet only his specifications, and gave him a 20-year lease, in that order.

Instead, Trammell Crow invented the speculative warehouse — a general-purpose building that he could offer to a prospective tenant not next month or next year, but now.

Legacy

“Starting with next to nothing, Trammell Crow built a multi billion dollar business empire”

Born in 1914, in a tiny three-room frame house in Dallas — which he shared with eight other family members — Trammell Crow started out with next to nothing.

Without connections, Mr. Crow had to rely on old-fashioned hard work to make a living and before his first “real job” with the Mercantile Bank in 1934, he plucked chickens, cleaned old bricks for reuse in new houses, worked on a construction site for 15 cents an hour, clerked in grocery stores, and helped unload railroad boxcars.

Fast forward a few decades, and Mr. Crow’s business legacy reads like a classic American rags to riches tale, with an astonishing array of warehouses, office towers, shopping centers, hotels and apartment buildings, in the US and throughout the world bearing his imprint.

Keys to Success

Those who knew Trammell Crow best, believe that one of the primary keys to his success was his openness — a combination of trust, generosity, sharing and optimism — which permeated all of his activity.

When others speak of Mr. Crow, the themes that come up again and again include integrity, leading by example and doing things with grace.

Additionally, Trammell Crow had a great eye for talent, hiring partners and associates right out of school, readily sharing his knowledge, and making many of them multi-millionaires.

He also had a reputation for being able to let go of the reigns, letting his partners, lenders, builders and brokers to do their jobs, while personally never shying away from pursuing and resolving tenant issues, unlike the approach taken by so many other landlords.

Business Highlights

Forbes in 1971 and The Wall Street Journal in 1986 called Crow the largest landlord in the US. The Journal said the company he founded was then the largest developer in the nation.
Crow’s holdings were said to be much larger than those of the better-known William Zeckendorf and Donald Trump and included hotels, hospitals, residential developments, and — just as in the early days of the company — warehouses.
The Trammell Crow Company was privately held until 1997, when it went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol TCC.
In 2006, the firm was sold to CB Richard Ellis group (NYSE:CBRE) for approximately $2.2 billion.
Today, you could fit all the office space in downtown Dallas inside the company’s holdings four times over.

Investment Formula

While we could go on and on listing Mr. Crow’s real estate achievements, what most people find even more compelling is how he built his empire.

A good part of his success boiled down to this 11-step formula:

1. Borrow the money
2. Buy the land
3. Build on speculation, then go find tenants
4. Lease the space, not for 15 years or more but for 10 or three or two
5. Depreciate enough to wipe out your income tax liability
6. At the end of the short lease, given inflation, lease again at a higher rate
7. Pay off the debt out of income. Keep all rents in the property. Kept debt service greater than depreciation
8. At the end of 15 years, own the property free and clear
9. Refinance the first mortgage
10. Put the yield into new deals
11. Don’t be in a rush to sell. Make your assets work for you

The Third Son — Harlan Crow

Harlan Crow is the third son of the legendary developer Trammell Crow, who almost single-handedly faced down creditors and saved the family from financial disaster following the 1980s real-estate crash.

And while around the office the younger Crow exudes a good measure of his father’s informality and openness, Harlan is his own man, with a his own temperament and outlook on life.

Perhaps the many battles he fought to save his family’s business in the 1980s left their indelible scars, as Harlan is known for both his toughness around the negotiating table as well as his keen awareness of potential threats.

If one had to sum up Harlan’s business philosophy (and perhaps his approach to life), it would probably be:

Competition is good-as long as it’s fair
Some battles are worth fighting, even if the odds are stacked against you
Sometimes you just have to stop drinking the Kool-Aid

Saving the Family Business

Trammell Crow spent four decades becoming the nation’s leading real estate developer. But in the late 1980s, everything he had achieved was imperiled by one of the worst real estate crashes of modern times.

As Texas was leading the nation into a real estate collapse, some of the most senior of the firm’s 180 partners, fearful that this crisis was too much for Trammell Crow to manage, tactfully suggested that he look for his successor.

With no public announcement, Mr. Crow chose Harlan — ‘’the best possible person that I knew of in or out of the family’’ — to oversee Crows’ investments.

Naively, many initially thought that the father turned to the son to confront the crisis out of desperation, rather than based on Harlan’s merit. After all, Harlan, at age 37, had put up some big buildings in Dallas, but he was still growing out of his reputation as a rich kid who had flunked out of his first college.

Harlan would soon go out to prove his detractors wrong.

An Internal Struggle

As the real estate crisis deepened, meetings increasingly concerned which partners would give up which buildings they had developed with Crow financing. Citing necessity, Mr. Crow demanded that many partners surrender ownership in return for the Crows’ forgiving their debts.

Some partners accused Mr. Crow of exploiting a real estate crash to increase his control, and he gained a new reputation for ruthlessness.

Where his father was calm, Harlan Crow at times took it personally. ‘’A number of people say that I was the heavy in this,’’ he said. ‘’I don’t like that view, but I can’t do anything to change it.’’ The settlements were fair, he said, and besides, ‘’Survival was the issue.’’

The Dallas Market Center Crisis

Another crisis hit the firm in 1994, when lenders behind the Dallas Market Center issued a foreclosure notice.

The Crows fought back, convincing a judge that a previously entered into verbal agreement with the lenders (i.e. telephone agreement), even one the lenders did not recall, should take precedence over any documents and that the judge should halt the foreclosure.

The case went to trial with a stack of loan agreements about four feet tall.

As the proceedings went on, the lenders, no longer confident in relief from the courts, decided to negotiate. Harlan threatened to walk away unless he won a huge reduction in the center’s debts. The lenders finally accepted $175 million for $580 million in debts and let the Crows keep the property.

A New Way of Doing Business

In his heyday, Trammell Crow had considered each deal on its own merits, with its own financing and partnership.

His son, took a more modern approach, establishing institutional partnerships and evaluating each new development opportunity on a portfolio-wide basis, in terms of its risk, diversification and likely returns.

A Visionary

In addition to being a survivor, Harlan Crow has also shown himself to be a visionary, much along the lines of his father.

Well before the continuation of the Crow empire was assured, he was already looking years ahead.

He saw that money could be made by managing properties for others, not only by developing and owning it; he saw a revived real estate industry dominated by huge financial institutions, not handshake deal makers like his father.

Crow Family Holdings

Today, while the structure of the family’s investments is complex, at the center stands the privately owned Crow Family Holdings, run by Harlan and nearly invisible to the public.

Like a public holding company, Crow Family Holdings has subsidiaries including the Crow Investment Trust, which owns most of the family’s real estate.

Below is a timeline of Crow Family Holdings:

1948: The Beginning

Trammell Crow builds his first warehouse and forms the Trammell Crow Company

1957: Dallas Market Center Opens

Trammell Crow develops The Dallas Market Center
This establishes Trammell Crow as a real estate innovator and leader in the trade mart space

1959: Hartford Insurance Building

Trammell Crow expands into office development with the construction of Dallas’ Hartford Insurance building

1968: Embarcadero Center

The Embarcadero Center breaks ground in San Francisco, preceded by Peachtree Center’s completion in Atlanta in 1965

1971: Forbes Magazine

Forbes Magazine names Trammell Crow the largest private real estate operator in the United States.

1977: Trammel Crow Residential is Founded

Trammell Crow Residential is founded
The company has developed over 269,000 apartment homes and today has 21 offices across the U.S

1979: Anatole Hotel Opens

Trammell builds and opens the Anatole Hotel in Dallas

1981: Wyndham Hotel Company

Trammell Crow continues to demonstrate leadership in the hotel space, creating the Wyndham Hotel Company in 1981

1984: Trammell Crow Center Opens

Trammell Crow Center opens in Dallas
Today, the Dallas skyline is shaped by notable office buildings developed by Trammell Crow, Harlan Crow and their network of partners

1988: Harlan Crow Takes Over

The third son of Margaret and Trammell Crow, Harlan Crow, assumes overall responsibilities for the business

1997: TCC IPOs on NYSE

TCC (Trammell Crow Company) goes public
Since 2006, TCC has been a wholly owned subsidiary of CBRE

1998 Fund 1 Closes

Crow Holdings closes its first real estate fund, forming the foundation of Crow Holdings Capital
Today, CHC has raised over $15B in equity capital.

2006: TCC Acquired by CBRE

In 2006, TCC (Trammell Crow Company) is sold to CB Richard Ellis group (NYSE:CBRE) for approximately $2.2 billion.

2008: Old Parkland Reopens

Crow Holdings relocates its headquarters to Old Parkland in Dallas, an office campus created by Harlan Crow

2013 Crow Holdings Industrial is Formed

Crow Holdings Industrial is formed, returning to the firm’s roots as a prominent industrial developer.
Today, CHI has developed 60 million square feet and has seven offices in markets that typically represent nearly half of the overall net absorption of industrial space.

2017: A Leadership Change

In 2017 Harlan Crow handed the reins of the company over to CEO Michael Levy, to lead Crow Holdings into the future

2020: Crow Holdings Office is Established

Crow Holdings Office is established, expanding upon the firm’s innovative history and expertise in office development.

Signature Crow Properties

Over seven decades, the Crow family has developed some of Dallas’ most iconic properties. Here are a just a few highlights:

Old Parkland Campus

Dallas’s first hospital, Parkland, moved to the site in the 1890s, and during World War II it housed recovering soldiers. After Parkland Hospital relocated in 1954, this 9.5 acre site fell into disrepair.

The hospital was acquired by Crow Holdings in 2006 and underwent a transformative renovation and redevelopment that created one of America’s most significant and impactful office campuses. The redevelopment cost about $300 million, none of which came from investors.

Today, Parkland boasts a membership of the finest business and civic minds in the city, having reclaimed its place as both a vital part of the future of Dallas, as well as a vital link to its past.

Contrary to rumors, Old Parkland is not technically invite-only, with more than 100 companies calling the campus home, including financial and investment firms, family offices and public foundations.

Insiders prefer to describe the community as “curated,” which is a genteel way of saying “exclusive.” Anyone can ask to lease space at Old Parkland, which leads the Dallas market in high-end office property. The board, in turn, is free to accept or reject applicants.

“We’re in the business of renting space, so I don’t want to act too pretentious about it,” says Harlan Crow, the billionaire developer behind Old Parkland. “It’s a business. But there is an additional screen — and a ‘screen’ might be a hard word, but you want people that are really involved. Not just successful business practitioners, but people that care.”

Its quirkiness hasn’t hurt Old Parkland’s appeal among serious and important people. Indeed, they’re drawn to it. President George W. Bush has leased the sixth floor of a new building under construction for his private offices, which should make campus security even tighter.

Campanile Tower, Parkland Campus

Harlan Crow’s latest project is the construction of the tallest privately built bell tower in the U.S. to rise in at least half a century (the tower is called Campanile, after the Italian word for belfry).

Unlike nearly all such structures, the bell tower isn’t located on a university campus or seminary. Instead, the 228-foot tower sits directly outside Mr. Crow’s office window, in the heart of Dallas.

Mr. Crow calls it a gift to the city and a reminder of the promise of entrepreneurial ambition. He has spent $25 million on it, including trucking in limestone from the same rock formation used to construct the Empire State Building. He hopes to create an Old World-style landmark for Dallas, a city more customarily associated with charmless new construction.

Atop the tower is a 30,000-pound brass bell, which Mr. Crow named Horatio, after Hamlet’s most loyal friend. Horatio is held in place by a 15,000-pound “deadstock.” They were both custom-made in the Netherlands and ferried across the Atlantic. It took a team of engineers several weeks to figure out how to lift Horatio to the top of the tower, using Dallas’ largest crane.

Mr. Crow says the Campanile is a monument not to himself, but to the spirit of America. He commissioned 10 sculptures made of bronze, marble and limestone of figures including Aristotle, economist Milton Friedman and the Roman goddess Fortuna, to be displayed in its winding interior stairway and around the base. These are figures which inspired the American way of life, Mr. Crow says.

The idea for a tower percolated in Mr. Crow’s mind for years, until in 2006 his investment company bought the deteriorating former site of Old Parkland, Dallas’ first public hospital, and later a mental institution.

His company had to apply for special exception to city planning rules to build the Campanile, which is taller than what is normally allowed on the site. His architects also spoke to the Federal Aviation Administration about flight paths at nearby Love Field, the architects and FAA say.

Anatole Hotel

The Anatole Hotel was developed in 1979 on a 52-acre campus in Dallas.

When first opened, the Anatole featured 900 guest rooms and a high-rise atrium. Today, it features two atriums, a 27-story tower, and 1,606 luxuriously appointed guestrooms with first-class in-room amenities.

The Dallas Market Center

Development on the Dallas Market Center began in 1957 as a series of real estate projects in response to the needs of wholesale trade.

During real estate crisis of the 1980’s, Harlan Crow refused to part with The Dallas Market Center, considering it a jewel in the family’s real estate crown.

While a hulking box from the outside, its bright and welcoming with vast atriums inside, bringing together buyers of home furnishings, fashions, gifts and the like with suppliers, saving travel time and expense.

It was in front of his first building, in 1963, that Mr. Crow waited in vain one November day for a motorcade to bring President John F. Kennedy for a luncheon.

The Harlan Crow Estate — 4700 Preston Road

While Mr. Crow did not grow up at 4700 Preston Road, he was able to acquire the property in the 1990’s and it is where he currently resides.

The Crow property is the largest private estate in the Park Cities, extending from Preston Road to Exall Lake, and covering nearly eight acres.

About the Estate

The original home was built in 1918 and its history is a rich one, having been the home of the legendary cattleman W.T. Waggoner‘s daughter Electra Waggoner, after whom the Buick Electra was named.

Even from its early days, the estate had been a showplace for entertaining.

Today, it includes an eight-bedroom home, a greenhouse, a swimming pool and two unattached servants’ quarters.

Additionally, in 2004, The Harlan Crow Library was added as a wing to the Crow estate. It holds thousands of rare books, manuscripts and artwork related to American politics, science and literature. It has a small stage where children can perform or act out skits, and even employs a librarian.

The Sculpture Garden

The property is also home to the famous sculpture garden, divided into two distinct zones, the “uphill zone for the good guys” aka Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher; Ronald Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher and a “downhill zone” for bad guys like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

The sculpture theme also extends beyond the property and into Teddy Bear Park, which borders the Crow estate. The teddy bear statues we see today were donated to the Township in 1996 by the Crow family.

The 77 Car Garage

To better accommodate gatherings at the home, the Harlan Crow Estate features a recently built, 77-car, underground garage.

As heavy equipment was carving out an underground garage at the Highland Park home of Harlan Crow, many neighbors wondered if this was all part of a plan to recast the home as a museum.

After all, the building permit issued by Highland Park was for a $5.1 million concrete garage accommodating 77 parking spaces (Mr. Crow’s home is one of the few Highland Park properties that could accommodate such a large garage, since Town ordinance requires setbacks and limits an underground structure, such as basement and garage, to one level).

But, at least according to Harlan Crow, all the neighborly speculation was for naught, as according to him, his goal was simply to better accommodate guests who visit his library for research, parties and political fundraisers and to take care of those who would otherwise park on adjacent streets. “It will be more convenient for our guests and more convenient for our neighbors once this parking is complete,” he said.

But, not all neighbors are convinced by this line of reasoning, as the construction of the garage has brought back some of their lingering concerns.

They point to the fact that Mr. Crow pursued a similar plan back in 2013, when he submitted an application to rezone his estate as a single-family residence and a historical collection. The rezoning would have allowed Mr. Crow to create an endowed foundation so that the Harlan Crow library could operate after his death and long into the future.

But, the idea met with stiff resistance from more than two dozen neighbors, who told town officials they feared it would increase traffic, noise as well as encroach on their privacy.

The Harlan Crow Library

In 2004, The Harlan Crow Library, a collection of rare books, manuscripts, paintings, statues, and other artistic treasures focusing on the history of the United States, was added as a wing to the Crow’s Highland Park estate.

Its creation sprung from Harlan’s lifelong interest in history and now consist of approximately 14,000 books and 8,500 manuscripts and span five centuries of exploration and discovery, politics, conflict, science, intellectual thought, and the arts.

Crow’s is one of the most significant private collections in the nation outside of the Library of Congress

Crow’s collection is reminiscent of the Edwin Cox art collection, which was recently auctioned off by Christies for 332M

Harlan has maintained a life-long fascination with history, a love that began when he was just eight years old.

President Herbert Hoover visited his childhood home in Highland Park and Crow’s father, Trammell, gave him the president’s business card, which became the very first piece of Americana he would collect.

Among his collection favorites, Crow counts an Abraham Lincoln syllogism about the evils of slavery, a copy of Poor Richard’s Almanac and a letter written in 1493 by Christopher Columbus, after his first trip to the New World. The collection also houses paintings by Renoir and Monet and by Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Philanthropic Pursuits

Texas Trees Foundation

Though he is rightly recognized as a first-class builder, one cause very close to Trammell Crow was the natural environment.

Crow championed trees. His motto was, “Trees are the answer.”

In 1982, Crow co-founded the Dallas Parks Foundation, which was the original predecessor to Texas Trees.

Mr. Crow also established and served as chairman of the National Tree Trust, a foundation to support local tree planting across the country by raising public awareness, mobilizing volunteers and bringing together corporations and civic institutions for action.

To learn more about the trees of Park Cities, click here
To learn more about the history of the Park Cities, click here
To learn more about the history of Texas, click here

Pediatrics

When their 1-year-old daughter Sarah was diagnosed with a potentially fatal respiratory illness, Kathy and Harlan Crow’s family physician directed them to Children’s. The hospital wasn’t the closest medical facility, but it was where the family was assured it would receive the best care.

The Crow family spent, what Harlan Crow called, a “very scary and humbling 10 days” at Children’s. Sarah recovered fully, but the experience left a lasting impression.

“Because of experiences with my own three children, my family is interested in child healthcare and education,” said Harlan Crow. “We found Children’s, and now I’m delighted we have that connection.”

Through that experience, the Crows also have become members of the Children’s Circle of Care, a group comprised of individual donors who contribute gifts and provide financial support to 22 of the top pediatric academic medical centers in North America.

SMU

Harlan and Katherine Raymond Crow have committed $5 million toward the construction of the Kathy Crow Commons in SMU’s new Residential Commons complex (opened in 2014). Mrs. Crow is a member of the SMU Board of Trustees and an alumna.

New facilities for the Commons complex include five residence buildings, a dining commons and a parking center designed to accommodate 1,250 students.

The complex is part of a larger SMU initiative created to enhance students’ living-learning experience and enable all first-year students and sophomores to live on campus.

The Arts

Trammell Crow and his wife Margaret were avid travelers who particularly enjoyed collecting art during their excursions around the world.

The Crows developed a special appreciation for Asian art through their numerous trips to the Orient.

In 1998, the Crow Family made it possible for everyone to share their love of Asian art by dedicating the Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art, a permanent museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas.